Copyright 2001 The Atlanta Constitution  
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
July 1, 2001 Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. 1D

LENGTH: 3227 words

HEADLINE: RE-EXAMINING TITLE IX: The price of equity;
Women gain ground, but critics say cutting nonrevenue men's programs isn't fair

BYLINE: TONY BARNHART

SOURCE: AJC

BODY:
Joe Bell figured this was going to be the best summer of his life.

He would work out, hang around with friends and get ready for his senior season as a member of the Iowa State baseball team.

"It was going to be great," said Bell, a native of Anchorage, Alaska.

But all that changed April 2 when Bell and the rest of the Iowa State players learned that the school's baseball program, which had been in existence since 1892, would be dropped because of budgetary problems. Iowa State's men's swimming team also would be terminated. All total, 68 young men were eliminated from Iowa State's athletics program.

"First we were in shock because none of us saw this coming," said Bell, a right-handed pitcher. "Then we got mad. People's frustrations were really flying because, basically, they told us there was nothing we could do. The decision had been made.

"One of the guys in the room asked why only men's sports were cut. They told us it was because of Title IX."

Proponents of Title IX --- the federal law that bans sexual discrimination in educational opportunities --- are justifiably proud of all the good that has been achieved in college athletics for women since its implementation in 1972.

The participation of women in college athletics is at an all-time high from 90,000 in 1982 to more than 163,000 today. Female role models in athletics, once a rarity, are now common as witnessed by the U.S. women's soccer team. The dramatic increase of women in sport has, by any measure, been a huge cultural shift in the United States.

But stories like that of Bell and the Iowa State baseball team are being cited by a growing list of critics who claim that for all the good that Title IX has done to increase athletic opportunities for women, its improper implementation during the eight years of the Clinton administration has done irreparable harm to males in college athletics.

These critics point to the fact that since 1993, according to studies by the Independent Women's Forum and the General Accounting Office, more than 300 men's teams have been eliminated in college athletics.

Earlier this year, Nebraska discontinued a men's swimming program that had been in place since 1922. Kansas recently dropped men's swimming and tennis. Last year, Miami said goodbye to a men's swimming program whose alumni included Olympic gold medal diver Greg Louganis. Twenty years ago there were 363 college wrestling teams. Today, there are fewer than 250.

Not all of these cuts can be attributed to Title IX. But nervous college administrators, fearing possible legal wrangling from the Office of Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX, have made one thing clear: When finite resources have to be reallocated to provide more athletic opportunities for women, cutting men's nonrevenue sports is their only feasible option.

"I think we can all agree that Title IX has been a great thing to improve opportunities for women," said Grant Teaff, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. "But I don't think it was intended to take opportunities away from men to achieve its goal. And that's exactly what has happened."

Proponents of Title IX say that it is being used as a scapegoat by college presidents and athletics directors who are unwilling to make tough choices in the name of equality.

They point out that for all the gains made by women in the past 30 years, they still represent only 42 percent of all college athletes while making up almost 53 percent of the student enrollment. They also point out that males at most major colleges still receive 73 percent of the funds allocated to athletics.

Donna A. Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, says cutting men's nonrevenue sports to achieve gender equity is a cop-out for administrators who need to show more educational leadership. Lopiano says that the budgets for football and men's basketball are bloated and that those excess resources should be used to provide more athletic opportunities for men and women.

"Unfortunately, it is easier for some college president to cut wrestling or men's gymnastics than to deal with the politics of reducing the football or men's basketball budgets," said Lopiano, a former women's athletics director at Texas. "Simply put, educational leaders need more guts to step up and do the right thing."

But what is "the right thing" when it comes to true fairness in college athletics? It depends on whom you ask.
 
Confusing guidelines

The source of the current conflict is easily identified. In 1979, the OCR issued a clarification of the original Title IX decision giving schools three different options to comply with the law.

The first option was the easiest to understand but the hardest to achieve: The percentage of females who participate in athletics roughly must be equal to the percentage of female enrollment. In other words, if 50 percent of a school's students are female, then 50 percent of those participating in athletics also should be female. This became known as "proportionality."

Proportionality is difficult to achieve for two reasons:

1) Football, with its 85 scholarships, skews the participation totals, which includes scholarship and nonscholarship athletes. Suggestions have been made that football be taken out of the Title IX equation because there is no equivalent sport for women. Women's advocates have adamantly opposed that idea.

2) Female enrollment continues to grow on campuses. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a student body that is 60.61 percent female. The school has 388 females participating in athletics, more than any school in the ACC. Based on the proportionality option, UNC is not in compliance with a minus-16.47 rating. Georgia Tech, which has 137 females participating in athletics, is in compliance because its study body is 29.15 percent female.

The other two options for Title IX compliance are less clear. One says the school has to be able to prove that it has a "history and continuing practice" of creating new opportunities for women. The other says the school has to prove that it has done everything in its power to "effectively accommodate" the athletic interests and abilities of its female students.

Title IX advocates say the law is fair because it gives schools three different ways in which to comply. Critics say the language in options 2 and 3 is too vague to prove in court should a school be sued.

Furthermore, they charge that the OCR under the Clinton administration pushed schools toward option 1 --- proportionality --- as the only safe measure of compliance.

They point to a further clarification of Title IX by the OCR in 1996, designating proportionality as a "safe harbor" for schools uncertain about their compliance. Critics claim that Norma Cantu, the former director of the OCR and a Clinton appointee, consistently wrote interpretations "favoring a quota-based approach to gender equity" according to a report by the Independent Women's Forum.

Those critics further claim Cantu's rulings were being unduly influenced by three feminist groups: The National Organization for Women, the Women's Sports Foundation and the National Women's Law Center.

"You didn't have to be a legal genius to understand what was going on," said Kimberly Schuld of the Independent Women's Forum, which often clashes with feminist groups over these types of issues. "OCR convinced schools that the only way they could be completely safe from lawsuits was to move towards proportionality. You can dress it up with legal jargon all you want, but it's still a quota system."

Relying strictly on proportionality to determine fairness, say critics of the status quo, assumes that women's interest in sport is exactly the same as men's, despite studies to the contrary.

"Because of the quotas, what you have now is schools starting women's teams and then going out hoping to find women who are interested in participating," Schuld said. "To us, that seems like a backward way to do things."

In an effort to improve their women's participation numbers, schools are beginning to field some nontraditional sports. When Tennessee and Clemson began women's rowing, coaches of those respective teams went into the student body with scholarships in hand looking for women who might have an interest in participating.

Two years ago, South Carolina was the first school in the SEC to field a women's equestrian team. Georgia and Auburn are adding the sport. Florida and Mississippi State might join them in the next few years. Schools like equestrian because it allows them to increase their participation numbers for women without extraordinary costs. In most cases, alumni will contribute the use of their horses and facilities for practice and competition.

Women's advocates counter this argument by saying women's interest in athletics can't be determined accurately because they have never had an equal opportunity to participate. Men have a higher interest in sports, they say, because of generations of discrimination that must be reversed. They say that once women are shown they have an opportunity, their interest will increase, and more women will benefit. Build it, say the women's advocates, and they will come.

Lucy Doolittle is the perfect example. She had never competed in sports in any level before the Clemson rowing coach found her on campus three years ago. She went on to become the school's first All-American in the sport.

"I just wasn't interested in sports," Doolittle said. "When I first tried out, I thought I had no chance of making the team. I've turned over a new leaf. Now I can't get enough of it. I love being out in the water."
 
Roster management

As schools continue the balancing act between men and women in athletics, situations have arisen that make some women's advocates uncomfortable.

Because Title IX measures participation numbers for athletes (scholarship and non-scholarship), some schools must place a cap on the number of male athletes who wish to "walk on" and participate without a scholarship. Even though they get no financial aid, these walk-ons count against a school's participation numbers. So, in some cases, male athletes are told they cannot come out for the team because they would throw participation numbers out of whack.

Critics say "roster management," the euphemism used to describe this practice, is denying opportunities to men to satisfy a quota mandated by Title IX.

"I have a real problem with (roster management)," said Dr. Michael Adams, the president of the University of Georgia, which has one of the best women's athletics programs in the country. "I'm a big supporter of Title IX, but I don't think that's what the framers had in mind."

Women's advocates and government officials bristle at the suggestion that women are receiving increased athletic opportunities at the expense of men.

Mary Francis O'Shea, the coordinator for Title IX enforcement for OCR, did not return a phone call seeking comment for this story. But she told the Chronicle of Higher Education that those who lay cuts in men's sports at the feet of Title IX are part of a "well-organized attempt to promote a misguided premise. The fact that some men's minor sports have been dropped in no way should be attributed to the growth of women's sports."

Others say that while it is unfortunate that men's sports are being cut, the current structure of Title IX is necessary to address previous decades of discrimination against women. Without it, they say, there would be no incentive for schools to continue to increase athletics opportunities for women. In that regard it is very much like affirmative action, a controversial concept that its proponents say is necessary to address past discrimination and force large institutions to embrace some level of equality.

"Title IX isn't a 'fair' issue," Joyce Aschenbrenner, the former senior women's administrator at Colorado, told the Rocky Mountain News. "It's not fair that men's sports are being cut, but it also isn't fair that women have been denied equal opportunities in athletics for all these years."
 
Athletics arms race

Women's advocates say the real culprit in the elimination of men's nonrevenue sports is an athletics arms race that has gotten out of control.

Here is Lopiano's favorite analogy:

A family's first two children are boys, and they are given everything they need to participate in athletics from equipment to summer camps. Both excel, one in football and the other in tennis.

Then the couple has another child, a girl, and their income doesn't change. And one day the girl comes to her parents and says: "I want to play sports."

Lopiano says the family has three options: A) They can eliminate the child who is a tennis player (i.e., drop the men's tennis team). That way there are only two children to care for; B) they can tell the female child that she won't have the same opportunities as her brothers; or C) gather the family around the table and tell the sons that they'll have to do with a little less so their sister can have an opportunity to play.

"Obviously, the solution is Option C," Lopiano said. "Institutions that are dropping men's teams are choosing Option A not because of Title IX, but because they are being terrible parents (educational leaders). The answer to Title IX is very simple: If revenues don't increase, then everyone must make do with a smaller piece of the budget pie."

That, of course, would mean paring the budgets of football, with its 85 scholarships and its significant travel and recruiting expenses, and men's basketball. That, say athletics directors, is not a feasible option.

In an ever-increasing rush for money available from television, football bowls, and the NCAA men's basketball tournament, athletics departments are pouring vast resources into coaching salaries and facility improvements in these two sports. It has become known as the "athletics arms race." Athletics directors, however, say they have no choice but to keep running.

When Bill Byrne became Nebraska's athletics director in 1992, the budget was $16 million. In 2004, Byrne said he projects a budget of $55 million. Nebraska's heating bill alone is up $400,000 from last year.

Nebraska spends $8 million supporting 13 women's sports. Those 13 sports generate about $500,000 in revenue.

"The rest has to come from somewhere, and that's football," Byrne said.

Lopiano has written blistering reports on what she sees as gross mismanagement of resources in football and men's basketball. She cites several examples to illustrate what she believes is college football's lavish lifestyle, including the common practice of schools housing their football teams in off-campus hotels on the Friday night before a home game.

But schools will not unilaterally take resources away from football because it is so competitive. The SEC, for example, recently shared $78.1 million in revenue with its 12 member schools. Of that total, $33.1 million came from football.

"We all have to wisely manage our resources, but you have to give football what it needs to be successful," said Vince Dooley, the athletics director at Georgia. "That's a fact of life."
 
Dangerous political topic

With a change in presidential administrations, advocates for a reassessment of Title IX say they may have a political opening.

During the campaign, George W. Bush said that while he supported Title IX, "I do not support a system of quotas or strict proportionality that pits one group against another. We should support a reasonable approach to Title IX that seeks to expand opportunities for women rather than destroying existing men's teams."

Bush has said nothing on the subject since the election but will send a signal when he appoints a new OCR director. That person will have the authority to review the Title IX interpretations of the Clinton administration and issue new ones if deemed necessary.

Advocates for change are also hopeful on other political fronts: Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) is a former high school football and wrestling coach and has expressed some concerns about Title IX implementation. OCR falls under the U.S. Department of Education. The new Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, is a former college football coach at Texas Southern. Among the members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is Tom Osborne (R-Neb.), the former head football coach at the University of Nebraska. A recent Supreme Court ruling (Alexander v. Sandoval) said that states, schools and colleges could not be sued for policies that have a discriminatory effect on minorities. Individuals can still sue and prevail if they can prove deliberate discrimination. Some believe this ruling could be used to counter the proportionality clause of Title IX. Others say it is a reach.

"When you're trying to do the right thing for everybody, occasionally you need to step back and take an honest assessment of what has really happened," said Teaff, the former Baylor football coach. "We think this is one of those times."

Advocates of the current Title IX structure point out that the courts have consistently ruled that the law in its current form is constitutional. After Illinois State dropped its men's soccer and wrestling teams in 1995, the male athletes sued the school saying their Title IX rights had been violated. The lower courts all ruled in favor of the school, and in June 2000, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

But given the closeness of the presidential election and the fact that Republicans have lost control of the Senate, Bush could decide to stay out of this fight.

Women's advocates point to a poll published in the June 22, 2000, edition of the Wall Street Journal. It showed that 76 percent of those polled supported Title IX even if it meant cutting men's programs to achieve compliance.

"If the current administration is even contemplating any changes in Title IX they will stir the wrath of the parents of 2.7 million girls who currently participate in high school athletics," said Christine Grant, the former women's athletics director at Iowa, in an interview with the NCAA News.

Lopiano says Bush cannot afford to be on the wrong side of this issue.

"It would be a dangerous political move for him," she said. "He can't do anything that would alienate a larger number of female voters."

Even some of the men's advocates agree.

"This one could be a little too hot to handle," Teaff said.

Meanwhile, back in Alaska, Joe Bell is still looking for a place to finish out his college baseball career. Several of his former coaches are calling around trying to find a school that needs another pitcher. As a junior, he knew it would be tough to find a school that would take him for one year.

"Every night I come home hoping that somebody has called, but so far there's been no luck," Bell said.

He understands the economics that caused Iowa State to drop baseball. What he still doesn't understand is the law or the politics that caused it to happen.

"I'm not mad at anybody. I'm really not," he said. "I just never thought my athletic career would end this way. It still doesn't seem fair."

GRAPHIC: Graphic:
Illustration of a broken scale, with a male sports player falling off. / VERNON CARNE / Staff Photo:
Donna A. Lopiano Photo:
Iowa State players will have to find another institution to attend if they want to play baseball. The school eliminated the 109-year program because of budget constraints associated with Title IX. / BUZZ ORR / Associated Press

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